Born in Manchester, England in 1942, novelist and broadcaster Howard Jacobson was educated at Cambridge University. He lectured at the University of Sydney for three years before returning to England where he taught English at Selwyn College.

During the 1970s he taught English at Wolverhampton Polytechnic in the West Midlands, an experience which provided the material for his first novel, Coming from Behind (1983). Subsequent novels include Peeping Tom (1984), a comedy of sexual jealousy satirising literary biography; The Very Model of a Man (1992), a re-working of the Cain and Abel myth; No More Mister Nice Guy (1998), the story of television critic Frank Ritz's mid-life crisis; and The Mighty Walzer (1999), set in the Jewish community in Manchester during the 1950s, which won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic writing and the Jewish Quarterly Literary Prize for Fiction in 2000.

In Who's Sorry Now (2002), Howard effortlessly charts the comedies and tragedies of the sexual battlefield through protagonist Marvin Kreitman, the luggage baron of South London: a man who loves four women and is in love with five more. The Making of Henry (2004), is a tender, comic story of love, hope and disappointment.

His two non-fiction books Roots Schmoots: Journeys Among Jews (1993), an exploration of his own Jewish roots, and Seriously Funny: From the Ridiculous to the Sublime (1997), an analysis of comedy and its functions, inspired related television series. He has also made two recent television programmes, Howard Jacobson Takes on the Turner, broadcast by Channel 4 in 2000, and a South Bank Show special entitled Why the Novel Matters broadcast in 2002. He is also the author of a travel book about Australia, In the Land of Oz (1987).

Howard has won the prestigious Wingate Literary Prize for three years running in 2005, 2006, and in 2007 with Kalooki Nights. His latest book, The Act of Love, is published by Jonathan Cape (2008).